Even in tough times, Duncan has fond memories

Verna Duncan has fond memories growing up in Montana, even when times were tough.

The BeeHive Homes resident was born in Chinook in the summer of 1929. Duncan described her childhood as a simple life, during a recent interview.

She spent time with her grandmother in Chinook, and when it came time to leave, she had to be bribed to go home.

“To get me to go home, she’d take a sack of buttons and give to me, and I thought I just had the world on a tail. I loved buttons. And I still do,” she said.

Later in life she collected buttons and even had a dog named Buttons.

The family moved from Chinook to Crooksville, Missouri, when she was a young child, hoping a naturopath could help her father following a stroke. It ultimately didn’t work, but Duncan looked back on her time down south lovingly.

“There was a black lady that lived down the block that I just dearly loved,” she remembered. “When it was time to move I wanted to stay with her. She was kind of like a grandma to me.”

From Missouri, Duncan and her family moved to Wenatchee, Washington, and then to Kalispell, where Duncan lived from the age of 7.

They lived on the northeast side of town, and Duncan remembered there weren’t many people.

“Growing up, I’d seen a lot of development taking place. You used to be able to walk across Kalispell in five minutes,” she said.

She also remembered the rough times of growing up during the Great Depression and World War II.

“When I lived at home, we had a victory garden, and my mother would can food for the winter. We had everything from sunflowers to potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, spinach, radishes, lettuce ... people would tell my dad he had a beautiful garden,” she said.

Her father was very strict with her.

“I couldn’t even wear fingernail polish. A friend put it one me once and I just loved it. When I got home dad wanted help outside, and I had that polish on, and I was in the house in the corner trying to get it off,” Duncan said. “I sure got a lick for that.”

Duncan remembers too a vintage Kalispell at Christmas time.

“I remember, it was so neat — uptown on Main Street, they put a great big Christmas tree in the middle of the intersection. In the evenings everybody would go out night shopping,” she said. Duncan recalled having fun going uptown and meeting people, or seeing people she knew.

On Christmas Eve, Santa Claus set up by the tree and gave every child a little sack filled with an orange or an apple and some hard candy.

“Boy, we really thought we had something! We really enjoyed it. That was a good time,” she said.

Another Christmas, a Santa Claus came to Southside school and she remembered getting a doll.

“She was my little Annie,” Duncan remembered fondly.

Summers were spent at the swimming pool in Woodland Park.

Duncan recalled one incident where she took a big fall.

“I was at the top of Woodland Hill to go swimming, and I stumbled and did a somersault all the way down the hill,” she said.

Someone asked her if she was OK when she hit the bottom.

“I popped up, said ‘yep!’ and away I went! And I managed to hang on to my bag the whole time,” she laughed.

She went to junior high in what is now the Museum at Central School.

Duncan did not finish high school, instead marrying Wilbur Lewis. She was 18, and he was 21.

“We met at a showhouse. Back then you could see a movie for five cents,” she said.

After the wedding, the couple moved to Kila and lived in a tar paper house. Times were tough.

“The neighbor had a whole bunch of magazines, so I nailed three magazines between the two-by-fours for insulation,” she said. “Then we went to town and got refrigerator boxes and took them apart to make the walls. We got some calcimine and painted the walls a light green.”

There was an old cook stove, and for cupboards, Duncan took apple boxes and put them on the wall to hold her dishes.

But it was a happy home.

“As the years have passed ... those three years were the best of my life, living in a kind of crude way, but a simple way,” she said.

It was there that she learned to crochet, one of many hobbies she would take up over the years.

When they returned to Kalispell, Verna took on the task of raising their three children, two daughters and one son.

Wilbur passed away in 1971 after a fight with cancer, and Duncan remarried later in the year.

Over the years, Duncan dabbled in a variety of crafts.

“I love to do crafts. I just did everything that came along that interested me.”

The list included knitting, painting, crochet and ceramics. She also makes tiny dolls out of lace.

“You name it I tried it,” she said.